The beam from my flashlight jumped from tree to tree as I sprinted through the forest, trying desperately to get back to the trail. Except where my light hit the trees there was only blackness, and tears swelling in my eyes obscured what little I could see.

The woods around me shifted with the almost imperceptible sound of running, betrayed only by the autumn leaves. I shot my head around in an attempt to get a look at the creatures chasing me, but it was in vain; everything around me was a dark void on this moonless night. Terrible, imagined visions of beasts and blood danced through my mind and I lost focus of the path ahead. The root of a tree, a phantom in the shadowy night, grasped my foot and I tumbled down to the hard, black earth. As I fell, I grasped onto the flashlight in my hands with what little strength was left in me. It was all that separated me from the shadows in this sinister wood.
I cursed in pain and frustration as I hit the ground. I had always hated the forest in the best of circumstances and now it seemed as if it were turning against me. Only a year ago it would have been impossible to get me to come out into the wilderness; I hated camping and hiking, and preferred to stay safe in my well lit home. That was before the news reports began showing men and women, affected by an unknown illness, turning into monsters.

I never heard any explanation of what was happening. From what little I gathered, a virus was spreading through the air. Some were comparing the danger of the virus to the medieval plagues, but that didn’t do justice to the terrible effects the disease had. The victims quickly became dubbed as werewolves by the media due to the physical symptoms. Like their namesake, anyone afflicted by the disease would grow hair all over their body at an accelerated rate and would have an increase in strength and speed. However, the most horrifying change was the Rage. Victims of the virus would become uncontrollably angry after only 24 hours. The Rage would cause these monsters, as they had become, to kill everyone around them. They would spare no one except other infected.

When the outbreaks hit Boston, not far from Providence where I lived, I resolved to leave town as fast as I could. My family owned a cabin nearby; one we used when I was a child. This was the only place I knew where to turn and it was where I hoped my older brother would turn as well. I hated the woods that surrounded it, but now they seemed to be my only escape from the madness that had been unleashed.

I looked back through the forest now; back from where I had come. I could no longer see my blue pickup that had been knocked off the road by my assailants. I had no idea how far I had come or if I even knew the way back to the road at this point. The chase had gotten me turned around and I realized I didn’t know where the cabin would be without the map. In the confusion I had left it behind in the glove box. Still, I couldn’t stay here. I forced myself to my feet and was looking for which way to run next when I saw him, standing in the flashlight’s beam.

He wasn’t tall; I guessed just over five feet. However, his muscles evoked the image of a professional wrestler in my mind. I felt as though he could crush any bone he chose, if he were inclined to do so. Worse still, the hate he expressed told me that he would indeed be so inclined. It wasn’t his strength that terrified me most, but the hair and the eyes. Thick, brown hair covered every part of his body that the tattered remains of his clothes missed. Long locks, like vines clinging to his head, and a ragged beard covered his face. Still, strange as he appeared, it would almost have been easy to mistake him for a normal man. Perhaps he could have been someone who had been lost in the woods. He was not a man though; the red eyes, the brightness of which there is no comparison in nature, shining in the light betrayed that fact. Indeed, he was more the Devil, which I had been taught about in Sunday school, than any person.

My flashlight flickered and I realized, with an alarmed thought, that my batteries would not last long. The woods began to shift again and I could hear guttural growls from all around me. I threw my light in every direction to catch my new foe. As I did I saw more creatures encircling me, surrounding me. Each of them looked at me with a mixture of anger and caution. They got into position around me, as if they had drilled this lineup a hundred times before, and stopped. There were eight of them, perhaps ten feet away from me, each one now facing the first creature I had seen; the leader of this monstrous pack. He, for his part in this macabre dance, judged me and waited. Staring at him, I now felt the cold sweat of terror on my hands and brow.

My light flickered again and the leader, perhaps sensing weakness, began silently stalking towards me, his face contorted into a look of unnatural anger. The rest of the pack followed suit, snarling and growling as their trap tightened on me. As they approached within three feet of me the leader stretched his arms into the air and let out a deafening cry, a howl from the very pits of Hell. It was the last thing I saw as my flashlight gave out and the darkness consumed me.